Huh.

[telophase]

Has anyone here done anything with or heard anything about Amazon's Mechanical Turk? Looks like something interesting for info professionals, among others, to pick up a little bit of cash. The pay for each task is, quite literally, pennies, but at a quick glance from my librarian eye, it looks like a lot of them will take seconds. Might be an interesting way to earn a buck or two here and there to supplement my survey income. Provided whatever hidden catches there are aren't too horrible.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I've heard about it, but haven't heard much of substance. If you hear of catches, share? I've been pondering it as well.

[penknife.livejournal.com]

Just surfing by:

I've used it without anything alarming happening (I think I currently have a balance of $1.75, or something, which I should transfer to my bank account at some point.) Some of the tasks that pay pennies are kind of entertaining, and others are basically volunteer work (Idealist.org wants someone to update contact information for nonprofits, which if you'd be inclined to do anyway for them, you may as well get $.03 per organization for doing it.)

I have a problem with some of the ones that pay the highest, because they tend to be kind of skeevy writing, editing, and transcription work at appallingly low rates. (I'll write for free, or I'll write for decent rates, but I won't write -- or rewrite, i.e. plagiarize -- an article for $1.00, or write shill reviews of products.)

The non-skeevy ones can be kind of fun, though. A more productive time-waster than playing flash games.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Yeah, I looked at a couple of the higher-paying ones and was turned off by the "Post a review of this item in your blog and you can't let on it's a paid review!" stuff. But ti's good to know about the smaller ones.

[onthehill]

I spent some time on them while unemployed - never earned much - I think maybe $30, but put it into my Amazon account & got a couple of books.